New revelations about the BP oil spill

In my earlier posts, I wrote about the perils of cut-and-paste emergency response plan and the feelings that BP workers were cutting corners before the accident happened. Facts have since proven me right.

Watch this video from a Congressional hearing where it was discovered that the regional emergency response plans for many major oil companies (Exxon, Chevron and BP) look eerily similar and they all have identified walruses as an animal that would be affected by an oil spill in their Gulf of Mexico Plans. So there was a lot of cutting and pasting going on among the companies.

In another hearing, emails from BP engineers obtained by Congressional staff show there was evidence that they were cutting corners because the production well was behind schedule and the delay was costing the company thousands of dollars a day. The big irony is that the delay cost turned out to be a chum change in comparison to BP’s eventual financial liability.

Here is a video of a BP employee’s sworn testimony before Congress on what happened before the explosion.

[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRgJj3RNg7o]

What are the lessons we learn from this: Don’t cut-and-past your emergency plans. Don’t cut corners to buy time and “save” money and don’t write emails if you don’t want the world to read them.